The Tulip Driven Life

Hello all, this is the first round of an online friendly debate between myself, Thomas Booher, a Calvinist Christian, and David Delmar, an agnostic. We do not know how many rounds we will go yet, but the only rule is that we cannot exceed 1500 words in our replies per round. The first round will be each of us presenting our opening statements, and all subsequent rounds will be responses to each other's opening statements. With that said, let us begin by introducing the debate topic, which I will be arguing for in the affirmative, and David in the negative which is: “God’s judgment and eternal damnation are consistent with His perfect benevolence toward and love of mankind.” Round 1 (Thomas Booher's opening statement): I confess the God of the Bible, as the one and only triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons, one essence/being. His original creation is a perfect expression of His nature.  God is not expressing love and benevolence when He judges ...

By: Thomas F. Booher The Reformed church is dying at the feet of Wokeback Mountain, and some prominent ministers are beginning to erect high places on Wokeback Mountain. If you told me ten years ago, when I first became a flame-throwing, cage-stage Calvinist, or even several years later after I matured a bit, that this is where we would be at the end of 2018, I would not have believed you. The Reformed church has been cowed by the culture, especially the homosexual culture and the so-called racial reconciliation movement. The Revoice conference put this on the map for homosexuality, and the MLK 50 conference did the same for racial issues, but make no mistake, these things didn't just pop out of the ground overnight. They have been growing and festering long before I knew anything about the doctrines of grace. Nine years ago I saw it at Covenant College, which is the college of the PCA, when my psychology professor praised his gay friend for marrying a woman a...

By: Thomas F. Booher I had a wonderful discussion with a Christian who I would best describe (based just on one extended conversation) as an Anglo-Catholic in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), and a big fan of C.S. Lewis. He is a philosophy professor, and with him I probably had the most stimulating conversation about God and Christianity that I've ever had with a non-Calvinist.  In fact, he said the one thing he was pretty sure that he wasn't, was a Calvinist. A lot of other things were still on the table for him, but Calvinism probably wasn't (but we'll see). Yet in a real sense, this didn't bother me too much. It is akin to our admiration as Reformed believers for C.S. Lewis (who was also very much like an Anglo-Catholic) or G.K. Chesterton, both of whom explicitly rejected Calvinism as making God into something evil, not unlike my philosophy friend.  I'd like in a separate post to talk about justification by faith alo...